Cindy Lamothe

The New York Times

How to Grieve for Online Friends You Had Never Met in Person

Last November, Kristi Pahr felt both shock and denial after learning that her online friend of over four years, Amy, had died suddenly. She says she still cries remembering those initial days of grief. Amy, she said, “was a better, more ‘real’ friend to me than most people I know in person.”
Ms. Pahr, 41, a freelance writer from South Carolina, first met Amy through mutual friends in an online Star Wars game back in 2013. She fondly recalls a similar “geekiness” and love of fantasy novels qui...

The Atlantic

When Kids Have to Act Like Parents, It Affects Them for Life

Laura Kiesel was only six years old when she became a parent to her infant brother. At home, his crib was placed directly next to her bed, so that when he cried at night, she was the one to pick him up and sing him back to sleep. She says she was also in charge of changing his diapers and making sure he was fed every day. For the majority of her early childhood, she remembers that she tended to his needs while her own mother was in the depths of heroin addiction.
From as early as she can reme...

BBC

The health risks of maturing early

I remember the first time a stranger openly gawked at my bare legs. It was the summer before I turned 11; I was at a small convenience store near our home. The man stood behind my mother and me at the checkout line, staring me up and down. He looked the same age as my father. But it wasn’t friendliness I detected in his eyes.

As a young girl who developed early and looked older than my age, my mind struggled to catch up with the rapid changes taking place in my body. The stares from older men...

The Guardian

Let's touch: why physical connection between human beings matters

We humans aren’t meant to live in isolation – loneliness has been proven to cause serious repercussions, leading to illness and a 50% increased risk of early death.

In her New York Times Modern Love essay, writer Michelle Fiordaliso makes the case for unexpected moments of intimacy between strangers. “Touch solidifies something – an introduction, a salutation, a feeling, empathy,” she writes.

It turns out that these moments of connection, while fleeting, have a lasting impact on our wellbeing...

shondaland.com

The Benefits of Laughing at Yourself, According to Science

Call it a coping mechanism or a psychological quirk, but few things are more soothing to me than cracking a joke at my own expense.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve defused awkward social interactions by poking fun at my past mishaps (of which there are plenty!). I’m definitely not alone in this, either: Strange as it may sound, many of us are happiest when we can laugh at our past misfortunes and turn them into amusement for others.
Luckily, science has begun to see the value in self-mock...

thecut.com

To Get Better at Understanding Other People, Start With Yourself

Most of us spend a lot of time trying to parse out what make us, well, us: We scour the internet for personality quizzes. We ruminate endlessly over the things we’ve said or done. We pick teams — introvert or extrovert? head or heart? — and then filter our decisions through the lens of whatever label we’ve chosen.
If you want to figure yourself out, in other words, there are plenty of strategies within easy reach. Other people, though — that can be a little more of a puzzle. (It’s not like yo...

Healthline

Endometriosis: A Quest for Answers

On the day of her college graduation 17 years ago, Melissa Kovach McGaughey sat among her peers waiting for her name to be called. But instead of fully enjoying the momentous occasion, she remembers something far less welcoming: pain.
Concerned that the medication she’d taken earlier would wear off during the ceremony, she planned ahead. “I wore a purse under my graduation gown — with a mini water bottle and pill bottle — so I could take my next dose of pain medicine without getting up,” she ...

healthyway.com

Types C and D: Two Unique But Often-Overlooked Personality Types

Do you hide your innermost thoughts from others or find yourself feeling irritable much of the time? We spoke with psychologists about how to spot the signs of this elusive personality type.
“Knowing yourself is the first battle won,” says Claudia Luiz, PsyD, a psychoanalyst and author in NYC. Learning how to achieve this, however, can be somewhat of a puzzle. While there’s an unfathomable amount of online tests to pick and choose from, trying to make sense of it all can get, well, overwhelmi...

healthyway.com

The Often-Overlooked Symptoms Of ADHD (And How To Deal With Them)

Many of us experience bouts of restlessness. Maybe we find ourselves daydreaming during a particularly long work meeting or struggling to complete mundane activities like washing dishes or doing laundry.

All these scenarios could be signs of boredom, but what if it’s more than that? What if, like Minnesota freelance writer Pauline Campos, distraction is your normal?

From feeling jumpy and irritated to not being able to remain interested enough in a task to stay focused, Campos, 40, says manag...

healthyway.com

My Colleague Is Having An Affair—Should I Expose It?

“I was depleted by their dynamics and by being triangulated into their lies.”
Sheri remembers the toll keeping secrets took on her back in 2012. At the time, the NYC resident says she was collaborating on a therapeutic theater project with two colleagues who were having an affair.
Both had led her to believe that the wife was privy to the nature of their relationship, but it soon...

healthyway.com

Symptoms Of OCD Most People Don’t Know

“Every minute of every day I had terrifying thoughts of harming myself that I could not understand to save my life.”
Prior to her diagnosis less than a year ago, Orlando resident Kate Feder, recalls spending months afraid of leaving her apartment. “All I wanted to do was sleep because that was the only time that the thoughts weren’t suffocating me,” the 23-year-old tells HealthyWay.
Mental health, like everything else, exists on a spectrum. But far from the rosy-colored depictions we see in p...

healthyway.com

Learn How To Decode Your Partner’s Mood

Here’s a confession: I am a mind reader. That’s right, I can glance at my partner and delve deep into his feelings with just one look. I am also able to accurately interpret and detect an array of emotions based on body cues, perceived thoughts, and the phases of the moon.
Okay, so I’m not actually a bonafide mind reader (in spite of how much I try!). The fact is, none of us are—and piecing together the clues can be even harder when it comes to our significant other.
While our familiarity wit...

healthyway.com

Signs You’re In A Codependent Relationship (And What To Do About It)

iStock/martin-dm
Let’s face it: Relationships are hard. Trying to parse out the right balance between sharing our life with someone versus being joined by the hip can start to get fuzzy over time.
And if Grey’s Anatomy has taught us anything, it’s that spending every waking hour with our “person” can make it hard to decipher where they end and we begin.
Apparently, it’s a line that often gets crossed for couples. Although popular culture often glamorizes this kind of romantic enmeshment, acco...

healthyway.com

Grieving 101: Healthy Methods For Processing And Recovering From Loss

Chris Navalta, 41, still remembers the haze of grief that engulfed him soon after his nephew, Robby, was shot in broad daylight in 2014.
“I felt numb. I felt like things were a blur and that there’s a void that can never be filled again.”
In his memory, the days that ensued can be recalled only in dream-like fragments. “I’ve dealt with death in the past,” the San Francisco resident says. “But never in this way where I was just talking to someone just a few weeks ago, and now he’s gone.”
“I di...

healthyway.com

The Realities Of Vanishing Twin Syndrome

You may have heard of vanishing twin syndrome—where one twin is absorbed by the other in the uterus during pregnancy—in the media over the past few years. One particularly stark example comes from the HuffPost story about a 2-year-old boy from China who “gave birth” through his abdominal cavity to his twin brother’s fetus.
What you probably didn’t know, however, is that the syndrome, while not as extreme as the story mentioned above, is more common than you might think.
A...